Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a common cancer with leading mortality globally but with few effective treatment options. NSCLC are also diverse types of diseases with major subtypes of adenocarcinoma (ADC, 40%), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC, 25˜30%), undifferentiated large cell carcinoma (LCC, 10˜15%), adenosquamous carcinoma (pleiomorphic carcinoma or PLC), sarcomatoid carcinoma (<5%), and others. Newly approved targeted therapies (NSCLC) have brought new hopes, including tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) targeting EGFR (e.g. erlotinib, gefitinib, etc.) and ALK (crizotinib). However, two major challenges limit the uses of these medicines. First, only small subsets of NSCLC patients respond to the treatments. Patients with EGFR activating mutations (˜10%), more frequently found in Asian women, more likely respond to EGFR-TKIs (Lynch T J, et al. N Engl J Med. 2004; 350:2129-39 and Paez J G, et al. Science. 2004; 304:1497-500), and patients with ALK-EML4 fusion (3˜5%) more likely respond to crizotinib (Rodig S J, et al. Curr Opin Investig Drugs. 2010; 11:1477-90). Second, the treatments always result in rapid development of drug resistance (Gazdar A F, Oncogene. 2009; 28 Suppl 1:S24-31; Bean J, et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2007; 104:20932-7; and Kubo T, et al. Int J Cancer. 2009; 124:1778-84). Therefore, new targeted medicine is urgently needed to compensate the existing target treatments. There remains a need in the art for effective therapies to NSCLC.
The methods of the present invention meet this need and provide methods for effective treatment of NSCLC.